The Great Solar Eclipse of 2017 crossed the continent, from Oregon to South Carolina, and gave millions of people the chance to witness one of the most awe-inspiring events in the natural world.

But you had to be within the "path of totality", a narrow band across the earth's surface several thousand miles long but only about 70 miles wide. Outside that band you would only see a partial eclipse, not a total eclipse.

And there is no such thing as a "partial total eclipse", despite the impression blogs and the news media might give. I honestly think that's why so many people misunderstand the utter beauty of the spectacle; they may have seen a partial eclipse in the past that was total somewhere else, and even though they weren't in the path the news kept gushing about it being a total eclipse, so they assume they must have seen a total eclipse and just didn't find it all that impressive.


Posted by Dan 08/29/2017, revised 09/06/2017

IRONMAN Oceanside 70.3 was my 2018 season opener. And I guess my main takeaway is... There's nowhere to go but up.

One major setback at this race cost me significantly, but there were plenty of positive moments too, and at the end of the day, I don't have any tears to shed about finishing 17th versus ... I don't know, maybe 14th? We all got the same burrito at the finish line.

Oceanside brings out the top competition, in both the age group and the pro fields. The front of the women's race was exciting this year, with former Oceanside champions Heather Jackson and Holly Lawrence, Olympians Sarah True and Paula Findlay, QT2 superstar Jeanni Seymour fresh off a win at IRONMAN 70.3 South America in January, and Anne Haug (the eventual winner) fresh off a win at IRONMAN 70.3 Dubai in February.

The race was supposed to start on the beach this year, but our swim course got changed at the last minute due to the threat of "four foot waves" at the original swim start. Apologies to the surfers in my Ohana, but I have no idea what this means. Four feet of snow is big snow, so four feet of waves must be big waves.

I mean, I'm sure Eddie would go, but I'm just a triathete; shredding the gnar isn't part of my agenda.

So we were back to a harbor swim (like last year), much to my delight. The water was smooth and calm in the harbor, and 62 degrees is about perfect for a sleeveless wetsuit. It's chilly in the morning, but the sun comes up just in time so we're not swimming in the dark. I lucked out this year and found my peeps -- five of us formed a tight little pod and I enjoyed the twenty nine minutes of bubble massage to my face from the kick of our lead swimmer (However, I could've done without the gash on my hand from one of my fellow swim twins who forgot to trim her claws).

I had a massively clumsy T1 as my pre-chilled (and mysteriously bloody?) hands fumbled with my race belt. This is unique to Oceanside; the requirement that the race belt be worn during the bike, due to strict security within Camp Pendleton where the ride takes place.


Posted by Kimberly 04/16/2018

After only two days in Indonesia I am in love.

Shanks ponies into the jungle

Indonesia was apparently a very popular destination for tourists before Thailand took over and began drawing people to Southeast Asia. Because of this the tourist infrastructure is there but the islands are blissfully devoid of other tourists. From Malaysia we took a local ferry and made our way overnight by bus to Bukittinggi. For whatever reason it was decided that everyone on the bus should feel like it would be a white Christmas after all and the AC was on full blast all night. Quite ironically we crossed the equator on this stretch making the equator officially the coldest part of my trip. At one point Bukittinggi may have been overrun with tourists using it as a jump off for various treks and tours or just visiting the scenic town, but these days it has settled back into its own quiet existence.

Posted by nik 12/27/2008, revised 02/08/2009

I suppose it's been too long since I've updated you all on my life. I don't have anything in particular to focus on, so I guess I'll do another bullet-point-posting... those seem to be the most reader-friendly anyway. I've really settled into life here, and I've truly been having an incredible time! I don't feel like any minute has gone by that hasn't been spent exactly the way it was meant to be spent. The problem is... most of my minutes apparently weren't meant to be spent on schoolwork. Well, let me rephrase that: The "problem" is most of my minutes weren't meant to be spent on schoolwork.

Anyway, yeah. Here's a summary of what my minutes were meant to be spent on:

• sitting in the sun or in the grass under leafy trees on campus, listening to great music on my headphones or chatting/ playing cards/ generally relaxing with friends that wander by; a lot of my minutes were meant to be spent doing exactly this... and it never gets old!
  
  
• group dinners on Sundays; for the past 3 Sundays, my roommates and I have gotten group dinners together, usually around 10-12 people. So far, we've had a sushi dinner night, a breakfast-for-dinner night (pancakes, eggs, and bacon all done outside on our flat-top BBQ!), and finger-food night. It's always good fun.
  
  
• playing beach volleyball on Friday nights with my 4's team, the Flogging Mollies (my roommate/teammate Scott was wearing a Flogging Mollies shirt when we had to submit our team name); we're really starting to come together as a team, and it's a lot of fun - I look forward to it all week.
  
  
• playing ultimate frisbee; my Monday-night team, Second Skin, is also really coming together to play well together (when we had to choose team colors, we chose 'skins,' which ended up working out really nicely, 'cause even at night, it's still really hot here). I still don't really know the rules, but I run and I throw and I catch, and it seems to working out alright. I'm still getting used to it being a non-contact sport, though. Apparently you're not supposed to body-check your defender in this game.
  
  
• brewing beer. Scott and I got fed up with high prices for bad beer, so we started making our own. Our first batch won't be ready for another 2 weeks, but I'm excited to be able to have quality beer around again! Well, we'll see how quality the beer-by-beginners actually is. Dave! Neil! What am I going to do without your expertise??
  
  
• laughing at silly things like the fact that the word "expertise" looks like something you do to be expertly in shape.
  
  
• laying out in my hammock on the back patio, enjoying the minutes that were definitely not meant to be spent doing schoolwork.
  
  
• drinking all the PG Tips tea that Mom and Dad sent me. At the rate I'm going, I'm actually going to drink all of that tea in the time I'm here, easy! (they sent me 2 boxes of 80 bags) Many of my minutes are actually spent brushing my teeth, too, for fear of the stains resulting from so much black tea intake.
  
  
• going on cool field trips for my Indigenous Australians class. A local Aboriginal elder named Rusty took us out for a day all around the area, sharing with us some of the incredible vast sea of knowledge they have about the land. It was really cool to learn about the uses/dangers of any plant around us, to learn how to read animal tracks (type of animal, gender, age, purpose of their movement... so much to be interpreted from such a seemingly simple thing!), to hear stories of tradition, myth, origin, culture, to visit a burial ground where I could feel the presence of generations and generations of Aboriginal culture, to see cave paintings right in front of my eyes that were painted there by a hand that moved across the rock thousands of years ago... yeah. There were some pretty cool minutes spent doing this stuff.
  
  
• watching Australia's "Biggest Loser" with all the roommates. This is the time that we all take a break from whatever we're doing (or not doing, in my case), and come together in the living room to watch people lose weight while we scarf down pizza or ice cream or cookies.
  
  
• ...then there's a couple minutes here and there where I throw an assignment together. Those minutes usually come immediately before the minutes that were meant to be spent handing in said assignment.
  
  

All in all, it's a glorious life. A girl can get used to this.

Me with Rusty, a local Aboriginal elder. I would love to have 5% of the knowledge that he has about the land!

Posted by Whitney 04/23/2008, revised 04/23/2008